Élan vital
by nocturnal messages
Summary: AU setting; fictional region. Wrene knew better, but she thought she could forsake her past. Everyone would assume she had died in the crash. It was perfectly simple; she could jettison her memories and bury her history, begin life anew. Go on pointless adventures and create her own mythos.
1. Maelstrom Falls

A/N: This was originally written for my own entertainment a few years ago, but I've decided to turn it into a fanfic. I may or may not be updating this, depending on how it is received.

* * *

The cargo van's motor stirred, murmuring dreamily beneath Wrene's knees like she was hitching a ride on the back of a slumbering beast. She dunked her box cutter into a jar of expired honey, angling the lacquered blade toward the sun and letting its warmth melt the grains in the syrup. Lavishing honey on a piece of toast, she nodded disdainfully at the apple core clutched in Melanie's hand. "Are you ever going to throw out that apple?" she asked, slurping sticky crumbs out of the spaces between her fingers.

Melanie pinched the apple stem's short wick and twirled the core through the air, flinging brown flecks onto Wrene's honeyed toast. "No," she said sweetly, "I intend to carry it for the rest of my days."

Wrene took a hefty bite of toast to muffle her laughter, adjusting the corner of their gingham picnic blanket as a cab honked violently behind them.

Melanie swung around wrathfully, her wayward knees knocking a melon platter off the roof of their van and into the street. "Go around, jackass!" she screamed, pitching the apple core at the cab's tinted windshield. Wrene glanced awkwardly about the gridlocked freeway. Cars packed bumper to bumper extended to the farthest margins of her sight; How does she expect him to go around all this mess? A whirlwind of vulgar hand gestures and soundless threats raged inside the cab. Melanie squared her shoulders and snorted. "Oh, thank you! You sir are a gentleman and a scholar; and also, fuck you!"

Straightaway, Wrene climbed down the van's sun-bleached flank, her toes curling around the metal running board and stepping onto the street below. She edged through the slender corridors between cars and waved amicably at the cab driver. He rolled down the driver's side window to scream at her and she shoved a mason jar in front of his truculent face. As she shook it a pitch-black substance roiled behind the glass, like she had bottled up the darkness from an eclipse. "Would you like some traffic jam?" Wrene offered smilingly. The scar on her cheek ruffled up like an inchworm. "Blueberry, I think.. might be blackberry." She scrutinized the unmarked jar, shrugged, and left it balanced in the flat of his hand as the cargo van's horn bellowed at her.

"Come on Wrene, the traffic's letting up!" Melanie called out the open window. "The early spearow gets the worm!"

Wrene spilled into the passenger seat and wrestled on her safety belt, muttering, "And the early worm gets eaten by the spearow."

The van lurched forward and picked up speed, the forgotten remains of their picnic flying off the roof and garnishing the cab behind them.

* * *

"No, I've got this Wrene, don't worry!" Melanie reassured, her sharp-featured profile gazing intently out the van's front window.

Wrene began her chiding lilt, a rather familiar sounding tune between them, "I really don't think you should-"

"FORD THE RIVER!"

Knuckles white, Wrene dug her nails into the dashboard, her foot stomping frantically on an imaginary break. "STOP!"

A quicksilver spray swelled over the van. Clear river water spouted through the holes in the floorboard like miniature artesian wells and Wrene's feeble stomping subsided. The current tugged the van in a sideways list. Cold rage kindled in her eyes. "I told you.."

"Don't try to tame me, Wrene!" Melanie shouted while the engine bubbled and fumed blue smoke. She set the parking brake and killed the ignition. The van tread water, silently fuming. "I am a fierce bitch! Do not ever try to tame me!"

Sullenly, Wrene watched water continue to jet out of the floor. She flipped up the hood on her jacket as Melanie scavenged through the backseat debris. "Shit! Where is the damned motor oil?"

"Here." She retrieved a black jar from the glove compartment and proffered it.

"Wrene, this is blackberry jam."

"Blueberry," she corrected, pointing at the label. Realization gradually dawned. "Oh no.. nonono.. That guy! I gave it to that cab guy!" She watched ire slowly hatch on Melanie's face and changed tack, "Well, it's not like you can change the oil underwater anyway!" She unbuckled her seat belt and swung the door open, water swelling about her ankles. "Look, I'll just trot off to the closest town and find help, simple as that. You stay here.. the captain always goes down with the ship, right?"

She left Melanie grousing furiously in the front seat and waded to shore, her jeans soaked through and clinging to her legs, stiffening her gait as she surmounted an embankment and shuffled along the road to Maelstrom Falls.

* * *

Wrene stood on a vacant hill where trees would one day rise. She could feel the anticipation of an unborn forest stirring under her feet, the light-ward yearnings of leaf and limb thrusting up against her heels, lifting her like a staircase on which each step existed only until she abandoned it for the next stair. A gentle avalanche cascaded down the slope, another tread crumbling to dust. _They're so far under, they'll die before they get out,_ she thought. _I should save them._ She envisioned herself prying up clods of dirt and rocks, rooting out the grass in fistfuls, and exposing fetal trees to the world, the sun glowing ghost-like through their transparent roots.

As she walked ever upward, the dead weight of her pant cuffs slithered after her, sweeping moisture over the dry earth. Wrene laughed, softly. _I am helping them; I'm watering them._ The hill leveled off and Wrene looked out over a land of clouds, fear and guilt building in her eyes. Then her gaze fell and she saw herself on the ground, cut off at the ankles, a reflection glassed in dove-gray water.

She couldn't see Lake Temperance for the fog, but she could feel its weight sinking into the earth, dragging the trees, wind, houses, everything into its mist. She reassured herself that she was firmly planted on the ground, not flying in the sky like a caged bird, _I'm still free._

Knowing full well she had left her map in the van, Wrene fished through her side pockets and scared up a knot of paper money, counted it, sighed, then replaced the bills in her pocket. Even if she was free, the world remained expensive.

She wandered lost and intimidated by the blunt wooden buildings huddled around the wharf. After some time she worked up the pluck to enter a bait and tackle shop.

She was a long time finding a map in the shop's ordered chaos and even longer pondering whether she could afford to be lost; the price wasn't labeled and she dreaded the humiliation that awaited her at the counter. Fingers worrying the wrinkled bills in her pocket, she swung around to leave without purchase and a miracle caught her eye. A posted sign: fishing contest, free to enter, special prize.

Lawlessly optimistic, she greeted the pert woman behind the counter, "Morning."

"Why, yes, it is morning, you're quite observant," the cashier replied dryly. She stared wonderstruck at Wrene's face like she was trying to imagine what it was like and how she would fare if their roles had been reversed. _She would probably kill herself,_ Wrene thought with more than a little satisfaction.

The woman's dimpled chin lifted and lowered as Wrene rose to her full height, took stock of the back-counter's exiled merchandise, then hunched over self-consciously. "Right.. Uhm, can I sign up here? For the contest?"

"Yeah," the cashier replied, steering a clipboard across the counter.

As Wrene fumbled to combine pen and paper into some legible symbol of her existence, she casually remarked, "It's a nice morning isn't it?"

"Yeah."

Wrene's brow furled, her smile tightening. "A bit nippy though."

"Yeah."

"Alright.. Have a nice day!"

"Mhm."

She whisked out of the shop in a fiery haze of embarrassment, privately reproaching herself all the way out the door and down the pier for having turned into one of those dastardly cheerful women. A fishing rod thumped against her shoulder and she hefted it reverently in both hands. Experimenting with its willowy swish and twang, she swayed to its fickle movements, looking ridiculously like a newborn deerling learning to stand upright for the first time.

After what felt like an eternity, she heard the telltale plunk of the bobber and felt the line tug taut. Ecstatic, Wrene rose to her feet and churned the reel, shimmying about as a flat, round shadow surfaced.

"Era," she called forth a glassy-winged dragonfly. "Kill it!" The yanma winged a spry circle around the pier, skimming low over the water.

An exotic fish breached the surface with graceful fury, hurtling its bulk into her yanma's thorax. Era's wings faltered and she sunk below the lake, her feet snared in the fishing line. The rod was loosed from Wrene's grip as the fish dove underwater, dragging her yanma down into the depths after it. The liquid pooling to the surface was hardly two shades darker than the silvery water, but the sight of her yanma's blood raked jagged shock across Wrene's heart. Moments later Era sputtered to the surface and Wrene collected the yanma in her arms. She removed her jacket and ran it over the bug's body, rubbing warmth and life back into the wounded creature. _It's not from here.._ its body, there was something about its skin.. _it has no scales._ A mucous membrane sheathed its innards; but what was the consequence of this fact? _Touching its skin has a healing effect. It tends to wounded pokémon at sea._ Era shed the jacket quickly and rose hovering in the air, multifaceted eyes flickering with the energy to fight.

"No," Wrene breathed, "have patience."

Arms trembling, she sifted through her jacket and extracted a box cutter and lure ball. Aiming the rectangular blade over the water, she drove it into the flesh of her palm and plunged her hand into the lake's numbing chill.

The water stirred and a pink dorsal fin emerged from below the pier. Its flank grazed over the gash in her hand, soft as breath against her skin, and she felt the wound close. She shied the lure ball at the alomomola's exposed tail-fin and it vanished in a wink of watery light.


	2. Some Belated Prologue BS

A/N: I realized this story probably won't make much sense unless I explain a bit of the universe it's set in. I've mixed in a few different themes from sci-fi stories/games. Most notably Fallout. Feel free to skip this chapter, though. As well, I'll be uploading a map of this fanfiction's fictional region to my profile. EDIT: Never mind, I can't even figure out how to link on here. I may try again later, but for now, no map. EDIT 2: Okay, I managed to figure it out, the link to the map should be up on my profile now, sorry for the delay.

* * *

The world we're stranded on is chronologically imbalanced: people take care not to travel too far south, lest they wake up separated from their loved ones by a thousand years.

On a planet where the land straddling the South Pole moves at a faster rate through time than the continents near the equator, accelerated development in the southern latitudes spurred the invention of technology far surpassing the realms in the northern latitudes (e.g. the South Pole was in the 21st century while the equator-lands were still throwing rocks in the stone age).

In the 27th century, an as-yet-unknown catastrophe occurred causing the annihilation of the southern pole's capital and government. This advanced society fell to ruin, degenerating into post-apocalyptic settlements, and the land was rendered utterly uninhabitable due to high levels of radiation and asphyxiating smog. Most survivors sought refuge around the equatorial regions, although a few continued to dwell in the slums of their abolished paradise.

Scores of smugglers roved the collapsed metropolises and cities, scavenging the ruins for functioning or serviceable technology. But wastelanders reported strange sightings in the latter days after the catastrophe. Rumors circulated about sightings of fantastic monsters that had arisen from the contaminated land, evolving in the accelerated time-zone from existing animals and other living organisms. Techno-scavengers captured a fair number of these specimens and brought them to the equator regions (colloquially called the "Midlands"), where they flourished and spread, killing off almost all native animals.

It has now been over five centuries in the Midlands and approximately 250,000 years in the pole regions. People boldly migrate southwards and attempt to reclaim the land from the feral beasts with a combination of their own mettle and the battle-worthy creatures they are able to tame. Crude capsules have been produced out of the husks of fibrous plants such as the apricorn fruit. Such capture devices are unreliable and do not automatically transfer ownership over to the user. Therefore, trainers must tame the captured creatures using their own methods, a very hazardous task.

"Premium" poké-balls are a rarity, but have the benefit of increased durability and capture rates. In addition, such mechanized capsules immediately subdue any creature stored inside, rendering it docile toward the trainer.

Gyms, chiefly called "bastions" in the Halcyon region, have been erected in the last 80 years, serving primarily as fastnesses and defensive strongholds for the region's cities and towns. It is traditional for adolescents and adults to set off on a pilgrimage to collect all eight of the hallowed badges by defeating the guardian of each bastion (i.e. gym leader).

Pokémon trainers also function as exterminators. It is their mission to capture or kill any monster they encounter while roaming the wilds.

The self-appointed "professor" of the region is an eccentric originally from the southern pole: Dr. Aloe Tannen is a reclusive and inveterate bigot, hardly bothering with any of the "savages" from the Midlands. She does however have connections in the wasteland and will sometimes disappear for several days, always returning with marvelous trinkets and gadgets.

She considers the progeny of this uncultured region to be utterly expendable and will frequently arm them with dangerous monsters, sending them out into the wild to collect research specimens for her studies.

* * *

 _Glossary of Notable Terms and Concepts:_

 **Halcyon Region:** The story's principle setting: a southerly-midland region lying contiguous with the borderlands of the post-apocalyptic waste.

 **Bastions:** The defensive strongholds of each regional settlement. Each bastion is presided over by a guardian of high repute.

 **Overpopulation:** After the outpouring of refugees from the Southlands and Borderlands, the Halcyon region's population grew exponentially, resulting in condensed cities, a massive increase in poverty, crime, and unemployment, as well as the construction of high-density housing districts for low-income families. Nativistic policies were established to protect the region's original inhabitants, creating a gulf of animosity between the already divided Halcyon citizens and Southland immigrants.

These laws were reformed after a decades-long struggle, but an innate prejudice toward immigrants persists in the minds of the region's older residents.

 **Capture Device:** A catchall term that refers to apricorn balls, poké balls, or any variant thereof. Capture devices are traditionally spherical in form, lightweight, and designed to fit in the palm of a child's hand. Self-powered mechanisms allow the device to retract or expand to conform to the user's grip. While stored inside a capture device, a pokémon exists in a half-conscious stasis and its biological processes slow to a near-halt. Hence, a pokémon can survive without food or water for several weeks when kept inside its ball.

The advent of apricorn balls and other devices crafted from organic materials predates the appearance of the first pokémon. Originally, these devices were designed by ancient nomadic tribes for the storage of inanimate objects like food and weapons. With the arrival of pokémon, they were retooled by borderland refugees for the purpose of capturing animate beings. An encrypted safeguard disallows these devices from being used on humans and thus far no one has been able to override this feature. The technology for subsequent capture device models was based on these prototypes, so all poké balls contain this preventative safeguard.

The production of synthesized capsules began a decade ago by Dr. Aloe Tannen in conjunction with Professor Samuel Oak of the Kanto region. She is credited with providing the schematics for the first pacifying poké ball. By tampering with the brain waves of a captured pokémon, these poké balls are able to automatically tame the creature within.


	3. Meanderings

A/N: You may notice for the next chapter or two a few random side-characters may appear that will have no bearing on the actual story. Apologies for this, like I said, this was originally written only for my own entertainment and includes several OCs that aren't my characters. Tesni is the only such character in this chapter. Also, side-note, I've changed this fanfic's rating due to the language featured in this chapter, as well as more mature themes that will occur in future chapters. 

* * *

She bowed low over a runnel and the sweet-smelling water lunged across her face, pelting her forehead and scraping at the corners of her fast-shaking eyes. If she chanced to open them now, the swift, piercing current would flush out her muddy irises and rinse the color from her vision until all that remained was blindness, a milky unseeing of things. She flung her head back, whipping water everywhere, and bellowed high, easy laughter into the clear air.

Curling sideways against the corner of a marble stairway, Wrene spread one arm above her head and flexed her fingers, gauging the aerodynamics of her regenerated skin as she caught a passing breeze in her cupped palm. The center of the mended wound was translucent and weightless, a void backed by wiry veins and dark red tissue that teemed with new life. She finger-traced the rough counters of her nose and cheek with her other hand, her scarred face scalded red and raw from the frigid spray, and wondered. Could it be that easy?

Surely not, what with life constantly conspiring to crush all her hopes and dreams.

Anchoring one arm around the post of an aqueduct, she reeled herself upright and knelt over the terrace's verge, gazing amorously down at the falls and listening to the shimmering sound of water glancing off smooth stone. If she had become jaded and cynical from living in Tachys City, it did not show. As she continued to scale the waterfalls with her eyes, thoughts of Melanie stranded in a water-logged van churned anxiously and utmost in her mind. Wrene had all but forgotten her mission: find help and buy—what was it?— _Blackberry oil.. no.. ah, motor jam, right!_

She stared down at the front of her jacket, pockets and metal clasps preening with cattails and dandelion puffs. Her mouth pursed up into a hateful twist of melancholy. In a fit of soul-searching she had given the last of her money to a lad selling wildflowers by the docks and arrived at the conclusion that she was destined to become a bohemian street dancer. That her dancing was practically lethal to watch had not factored into the decision.

A darkly moving shape caught the corner of her eye and she watched bewildered as an agile creature spidered its way up the rocks below. It ascended rapidly and with a flurry of dexterity that confused the eye. Wrene shifted her stance, holding Era's poké ball at the ready. At the sight of its contorted face her mind flew off in a panic, _Sea monster? No.. can't be.. there's no such thing as mountainous sea monsters.._ She took three controlled steps back, just in case.

But curiosity overpowered self-preservation. Wrene mustered her courage and edged forward again. A cumulus of white hair puffed out over the stairway's balustrade as she leaned over the edge. She rolled her eyes at her own foolishness and felt her fear ravel away; it was only a girl climbing the rocky escarpment. "Ah.. that's it!" Wrene's shouts of encouragement swooped out over the peak, up then down and up again like birds at sea."Keep climbing! Breathe through your ears!" Her hands hung expectantly over the railing and she wasn't even sure herself whether she was waving a greeting or offering to sweep the girl up into the security of her arms.

A flicker of disappointment skimmed across her face when the girl grappled a hand around the crossbeam and boosted herself over the balustrade. As the railing swayed under the passing weight, Wrene turned around, hands sunk dejectedly in her pockets. She felt as if a rare bird had narrowly escaped her grasp. She watched the girl totter forward in a lightheaded daze, a drifloon offsetting her exaggerated movements, and Wrene almost hoped she would stagger off the edge. Not out of malice, but merely so the girl could be caught.

The girl rounded on her, tubes and valves choking the lower half of her face in a cage of otherworldly geometry. Wrene's arms ached with a weight heavier than rationality could bear: the urge to maim the facial parasite, shatter filters, cut wires, kill artificial life. Then, a muffled sound resonated from ahead and below the convolutions of her respiration mask, "Ah, I... my name is Tesni," and Wrene's well-honed fear of technology transformed into the unspeakable terror of conversation and—oh horror of eldritch horrors—sustained eye contact. "And this is Arc," the girl indicated to her drifloon, "we're from Sangwyn City."

"I'm Wrene," she managed, bristling and glancing away from the slight shift in the girl's otherwise steadfast gaze. _Well, get on with it.._ she thought, resigned to her fate as a curiosity.

Sunlight percolated through the ghostly balloon and emerged on the other side, muddled and murky, like looking through the bottom of a wine bottle. Wrene blinked, absorbing the drifloon's appearance and trying to push her thoughts _outward_ , "Arc... That's a nice name. Do you ever notice how the most challenging thing about this whole pokémon-deal are the blasted nicknames. Literally, capturing and taming, easy as baking cherry pie, but naming! I just caught an alom"—her mouth stumbled drunkenly around the word—"omomo.. momola.. And I have zero ideas. The idea factory is out of business."

"Ah! And Sangwyn.. uh, yeah, me too," she sputtered. _Why? Why did you say that? You've never even been to Sangwyn!_ Maybe it was her voice, the loft of her words; no, not the voice, the way Wrene breathed, drawing in crisp gasps of uncertain wonder. And her pigmentless hair. All hallmarks of an airborne. Her only hope hung on a single thread of knowledge: that the truth had been reduced over time, watered down by retelling. From fact to legend to fairytale, she was concealed by contradictory histories and believed herself to be quite secure. "So, have you come to take the air?" she asked, feigning nonchalance as she mounted the stairway and began to ascend. Wrene gathered her shoulders together. She eased her hood up, slowly lengthening her stride in an effort to outpace the girl and her sharp, reflective stare.

Another thoughtful hum sounded behind her, and then the girl spoke, "Umm, well, take in, yes."

Taken aback by her own carelessness, Wrene's face blanched and her neck tunneled deeper into her cowl. "Ahh.. Sorry, I'm such a dork.. I didn't mean it like that," she insisted lowly. The falls seethed white noise below the walkway, washing out the nervous quiver in her voice.

Flicking Tesni a penitent look, Wrene shook her head mildly, her eyes wrinkling up around a milkwarm smile. With rising laughter, she continued, "Like my mom always used to say: 'Wrene, you're woolly-headed in every sense of the word.' Guess she's right." She peeled back her hood, gesturing pointedly at the river-washed hair that had begun to dry into a curly crust over her forehead.

A shrill cry cut them short. Stopping her ears with two fingers, Wrene felt a gust of wind glide over her as a bulbous creature descended from the air, finding a perch on Tesni's back. She caught a flash of the hoppip's wide-spaced eyes peering hungrily over the girl's shoulder, snagging a berry from her backpack before it wafted away again, green fronds whirring fiercely along an updraft.

Without prompting, the sun-filled ghost veered off in swift pursuit of its quarry, Tesni chasing after the two of them with a cry of, "Arc!" Wrene observed the ensuing battle from her position on the stairway, her guarded expression fast dissolving into visceral shock. An exhaust-white smog shot from the drifloon's crossed mouth, enshrouded the hoppip. It collapsed, writhing into oblivion at Tesni's feet.

Residual smog rolling over her waist, Wrene turned heel and proceeded her climb, embittered by the girl's callousness. _It's dead.. it was just hungry, and now it's dead._ Her fingers trickled down to the lure ball in her pocket, feeling for the catch of its freshly rosined surface against her skin. _But I was going to do the same thing._ She felt almost opaque in her self-disgust.

* * *

The healing center slowly resolved into view, emerging from the mist and water like the prow of a sea-grizzled ship. Reaching out to rap her fist against the door, she felt a slight resistance tug her arm back to her side. She turned her head and a poké ball expanded inches from her face, her breath imprinting foggy circles on its cold exterior.

"Hey you, mainstream trainer, battle for the masses!"

The poké ball retreated from view and Wrene craned her neck forward, looming over her shrill-voiced challenger: a mere wisp of a boy sporting weedy ash-blond hair. All four feet of him rippled with haughty aggression.

"..Uh, what?" she asked, her mouth pinched from repressed laughter.

"I am going to become the greatest pokémon master this shit-stain of a region has ever known! And the only reason history will remember you, you fucktard airborne, is because on this fucking day you became the first person to lose to Troy Peak!" His shouts cut clear through her, compressing the sharp edges of her smirk into a deep frown; she suddenly felt very travel-worn and windswept.

 _Why don't you go crawl back into your mother's whorehole, you earthbound worm,_ was what she would have said, had she been ten years younger, before laughter lines began to seep into her petulant scowls; so, instead, she asked, "Why do you want to become a pokémon master?"

"So I can become famous and do lots of drugs. NOW LET'S GO!" he screamed, grabbing hold of her hood and dragging her bodily up several flights of stairs and onto a grassy ledge half-sunk in a roaring waterfall.

Pokémon master.. Such a frivolous dream to cultivate, and she knew she had to destroy the notion quickly. Judging by the earnest pride in his eyes, his words were more than posturing. He wholly believed in his own strength as a pokémon trainer. But she would fix that soon enough.


	4. The Battle

With her palm sweating around Era's poké ball, Wrene hoisted her arm and executed the toss. A streak of crimson soared over the field and Era alighted high in the branches of an ash tree, her tail pulsating in and out like bellows as she cocked her head about, her beak twittering irritably.

She shot off into the bright air, whiplashing branches and shearing along the grass before swerving up into the sky, her wings pelting the wind like a monsoon.

Basking in the wake of Era's elegant flight, Wrene triggered the lure ball's power button and delivered it with an underhand throw. The ball flumped onto a stray tuft of grass and squalled open in a flash of light, her alomomola flopping flat onto its side like a hunk of pink granite.

Reedy laughter swept across the battlefield; her prepubescent opponent was jeering at her from the far end of the ledge, "Pffttt.. What the hell is that! A giant vagina?"

Wrene stamped the grass underfoot, huffing indignantly, "It is not! It's an aloomoo.. llama.. loo—uh, fish-thing. IT IS THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF A VAGINA!"

Troy snorted wildly, arms crossed taut over his stomach as he doubled over laughing. Righting himself, he disengaged two pocket-sized capsules from his belt with one hand and tossed the other dismissively at her. "Whatever. Don't get your panties in a twist. Pwnage! DeathBringer! Feeding time!"

Wrene sheltered her eyes from the fleeting burst of incandescence. She heard a guttural cry rise up from the fringes of the field. Her hands parted from her face and she spotted a pair of scraggly birds sunk up to their necks in the underbrush, their tawny heads alternately weaving and bobbing with movements as lithe as the surrounding grass. _That little cherry-picking bastard.._ Unwittingly, she had fallen for the kid's ruse. Her mouth was cotton-dry as she swallowed the last wisps of her pride and steeled her voice, "You have a clear advantage. Can we move to a bigger area?"

He sneered. "No dice. Pwnage, go fuck that vagina-fish up!"

The twin birds lunged through the grass, gathering speed before taking a running leap over a felled tree. Dirt encrusted toes pitched through the air and the disjointed heads melded into one surging terror: the doduo crashed to the ground, feet already in motion to run. In less than a second, the doduo had sprinted clear across the grassland. Its dual beaks reared back and drilled into her alomomola's inert body, chunks of pink meat and splinter-thin bones cracking and sliding down its ravenous throats.

She scrabbled through both pockets for the lure ball and realized the capture device was securely lodged under her alomomola's fast-dwindling body. "Shit." But even as a thousand worthless strategies waged war for control over her tongue, moisture began to condense and trickle off the alomomola's perforated skin, water droplets hovering in the air like stagnant rain. The droplets coalesced and roved into liquid coils, twisting and intertwining around the fish from the ground up; the rings gyrated and chimed a high-tuned hum, rejuvenating the alomomola's gored skin.

Two commands clashed lightning-fast across the grassy expanse, first his, then hers: "Mirror move then peck!" "Era, quick attack to the sky!"

The doduo's body was aglow in a veil of mimicked water rings as it swung its beaks back to unleash the second-coming of its two-headed fury. Era descended from above and crimsoned a wide gash through the supple grass, flitting defensively over the immobilized alomomola long enough to entrance the bird's keen eyes. Then she took to the sky. The doduo's right head swerved upward in pursuit and its beak speared deep into its twin's slender neck. A wide spray of blood melded with a beam of red energy as the dying pokémon was recalled.

"Yes!" Wrene unclasped her hands and pummeled the air with exultant fists. If she could have locked arms with herself and ran skipping across the field, she would have.

She couldn't have detected the cunning glint in his eye. "DeathBringer, you're next! Use the Spikes of Doom, phase one!" A pinecone-esque pokémon rolled lopsidedly out of the ever-shifting grass and spun rapidly in place, discharging metal shrapnel from its steel-plated body and tinseling the shallow grass with razor-sharp spikes. "DeathBringer, employ phase two!" The ominously named creature conjured up a dark vortex from the sky and Wrene fell to her knees with a strangled scream, her body leaden under the amplified gravity field. She labored to raise her head and watched as Era struggled tortuously on the ground, half a dozen spikes impaled through her back.

"Stop! I forfeit, you win, just stop!" she cried.

"I'll call him off, but first you have to give me this." Her vision wavered unsteadily over to the object cupped in his palm.

"Yes, take it, just stop! You're killing her!"

He flaunted Era's poké ball, tossing it in the air and catching it with subtle flicks of his wrist. "Hm, you know what? No. I think I'll just be on my way. DeathBringer, wait here and keep the gravity amped up until the bug croaks and make sure this sorry excuse for an idiot sits tight. Would be a shame if her pokémon bled to death without anyone around to witness it." His eyes flinched away from the woman's spitting curses and dry sobs as he receded mirthlessly down the stairway. Troy Peak descended victorious.


End file.
